Obama, in His Sole Discretion

With each passing day, President Barack Obama, leftism personified, demonstrates that leftism is characterized by anything other than the human compassion it claims as its exclusive possession.

I’ve always said leftists are about not compassion or treating people with sensitivity and respect, much less equally, but control and bullying, all with an arrogant, mean-spirited air of superiority.

For Obama, there are at least two aspects to his control-freakishness. He not only pushes policies that give the federal government vastly more control over our lives but also is inordinately dictatorial in the manner in which he ramrods his agenda through, displaying utter contempt for what anyone else thinks, what he might damage with his unilateral actions and, most of all, the Constitution and the rule of law.

Obama is on a tear now, and no one had better get in his way. He told a group of liberal Democratic donors at a fundraiser this week in New York: “I hope you will all step up because, although I’m very optimistic about our long-term trends, the notion that we would waste two years in further inaction rather than move boldly on a path that I think all of us in this room agree on — we don’t have time to waste. … The clock is ticking. … I want to squeeze every last little bit of work that I can during the remainder of my term.”

Prior to his taking office, did anyone ever tell this man no in his life? He acts as though no one else has any say at all in policy decisions in a nation established with three coequal branches of the federal government, individual states with robust powers and citizens armed with individual liberties.

It’s as if he truly believes that as president, he has the power and a mandate to cram through every last morsel of his leftist wish list, no matter who opposes him or whom he hurts in the process.

His latest gambit is to impose federal regulations that could extend overtime pay to as many as 10 million workers who are now ineligible for it. What makes this leftist president think he has a duty to use his office to act like a union boss, micromanaging what management pays employees, irrespective of any of the multitudinous factors that have to be considered in making such a decision?

This is part of a disturbing pattern. Obama obviously doesn’t care that his onerous regulatory, spending and taxing policies have put a severe and long-term drag on the economy, as long as he gets to use the Monopoly money to spend on pet projects and to redistribute to people he deems, in his sole discretion, to be worthier of it.

He is defiantly unconcerned that Obamacare is going to raise people’s premiums, as finally admitted by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, despite his promise that it would reduce the premiums for a family of four by some $2,500. He doesn’t care that Obamacare is radically reducing the available medical specialists in almost every field throughout the country, that people are losing their plans that he promised they could keep or that it is forcing people out of work. As long as, in his sole discretion, he gets to keep his beloved Obamacare, he will not even consider the collateral damage.

In his push to extend unemployment benefits ad infinitum, in his sole discretion, he callously ignored study after study showing that these extensions cost people jobs. He doesn’t care that increasing capital gains taxes reduces overall revenues. He doesn’t evidence the slightest concern that his unilateral action, in his sole discretion, to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour could cost 500,000 jobs, according to the Congressional Budget Office. He is the president and a wonderful liberal who “cares” about the little guy, so don’t you dare question him.

Trade associations, which are already engaged in fighting him over this minimum wage insanity, say they were blindsided by his announcement to extend overtime pay to workers. “This came as a shot out of the blue,” said David French, the National Retail Federation’s senior vice president for government relations. “Just on the surface, this looks like an enormous new administrative burden.”

But Obama can’t be concerned with grumbling from the peons. Betsey Stevenson of the White House Council of Economic Advisers said they were trying to “make the labor force as fair as possible for all workers.”

There they go again. It’s all about “fairness” and “economic justice” and other Jane Fonda-esque euphemisms to disguise their tyrannical actions as caring. Fairness for whom? If employers decide to limit employees’ hours or cut their base pay to account for overtime, will that be fair for them?

People are rightly concerned that Obama routinely ignores the Constitution and rule of law, but they sometimes overlook just how callous he is in the guise of being compassionate, and it’s time he quit getting a pass for his officious behavior.

David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book, “The Great Destroyer,” reached No. 2 on the New York Times best-seller list for nonfiction. Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at: www.davidlimbaugh.com.: